Stuffed Turkey

With Thanksgiving over and done, I feel like a stuffed turkey. I am now officially 6 months pregnant and easily used this as my excuse for eating like a line backer this holiday. I always cook enough to feed an army. I have no idea why I do this, but it's especially handy during Thanksgiving. It allows for never ending left overs! There was just four of us this year, but I made enough food to last for a few days. That way, I had to exert all the effort in one day of cooking, but I got to enjoy several days of eating without having any work to do! Now that takes planning. The only thing that would have made this particular holiday better would have been not having to worry about doing any school work or studying. I had the week off from work, but with preparations for the food and doing school crap, it really felt as if I had no break. Sigh, maybe by not doing anything for Christmas this year, I can acutally relax and enjoy my time off before the baby comes. This girl needs her sleep. And pie.

Who Put the X in Xmas?

As the holidays approach I only have one thing to say, bah humbug! Seeing folks put up Christmas lights before Thanksgiving really irritates me. It seems like the last few Christmases have been filled with more dread than excitement. I tried to get excited about it last year. Despite putting up the tree and other decorations, cooking a nice meal to spend with my small family, and opening the few gifts we managed to get for each other, it still felt forced. Maybe it's because I am getting older and Christmas doesn't hold the wonder and excitement it did while I was a kid. I suspect this is my last year to allow myself to feel this way. Next year I will have a small child of my own to buy gifts for and to get excited about. I hope I will feel differently by then. I think it's just the idea of Christmas, in all it's retail glory, that puts me off. Not being a religious person probably doesn't help matters either. Perhaps next year I'll feel more ho, ho, ho, than oh no.

Essay Blog Post

In Sherman Alexie's What Sacagawea Means to Me, he begins writing using a sarcastic tone about the nature of life and how everyone, "regardless of race, religion, gender, and age", at some point in their life will get to be like Sacagawea in some way. What he means by the examples he gives in his first paragraph - being kidnapped as a child, sold and forced to marry, march alongside two strange men and lead them on their expedition, and all you get is a stinking shirt for your trouble - is that life is a journey that is sometimes unexpected and certainly unpredictable. You are raised by your parents standards, you go to school as expected, get a job as you are typically forced to do in order to pay bills and support yourself, marry and have children, complete this long journey that is life, and then you die. The dying part is the t-shirt you get for your troubles. So, no matter who you are, where you come from, this is life's journey for you. Noone is exempt.
Alexie discusses, with a sense of irony, that Sacagawea is a contradiction, like so many other Americans - Miles Davis, a famous musician and descendent of slaves, Emily Dickinson writing poetry while Crazy Horse was attacking Custer, Ted Bundy, a respectable, handsome serial killer. She should have hated and rebelled against these white men. In fact, she died from a mysterious illness obtained by the very people who had basically enslaved her and whom she helped. Just as Sacagawea was destroyed by this illness, so were so many other lives by the colonization and settling of America that she had a small hand in. She is a contradiction. He mentions that she is no hero, and the reason is that, forced or not, she did participate in forever changing Native American lives - but, she is not the only one. Many individuals, black, white, Native American, and even canine, participated in this journey that forever changed America. Life is full of contradictions just like Sacagawea's.
Alexie's tone shifts throughout the essay, and he ends in a somewhat bitter tone. He says, "I want to hate this country and its contradictions", but he cannot because, simply put, he exists because of them. Perhaps we all do.